[Discuss] oops Fwd: Re: bios upgrade appears to have broken access to my google account and gmail

[Arthur Ralfs]

Meant to send this to the list but just noticed I only sent it to Alan. 
FWIW here it is.

Arthur


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: [Discuss] bios upgrade appears to have broken access to my 
google account and gmail
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2019 06:49:04 -0700
From: Arthur Ralfs <arthur at mathbrane.ca>
To: Barbara Ellen Irwin <beirwin at shaw.ca>

On 8/4/19 1:31 PM, Barbara Ellen Irwin wrote:
> Arther wrote:
> 
>> Personally I avoid using Google.
> 
> Hi Arthur:
> 
> I don't like google's constant attempts to extend their monopolies,
> and their cavalier (to put the best face on it as possible) attitude
> to privacy.
> 
> So I also avoid them (but with the important exceptions of google
> search and gmail).
> 
> With regard to searching, I don't know of alternative searching
> technology that is even in the same ballpark as google searching.
> Thus, I think they have an effective monopoly there so I am stuck (and
> let's be honest you are probably stuck as well) even though google is
> memorizing every one of our searches with all that means with regard
> to our privacy.
> 
> With regard to mail servers, at least one alternative to gmail has
> deliberately introduced severe issues with mailing list posts in 2014,
> see
> <https://www.pcworld.com/article/2141120/yahoo-email-antispoofing-policy-breaks-mailing-lists.html>. 
> 
> One of my development colleagues was subject to this issue (he kept
> being arbitrary unsubscribed from the SourceForge PLplot mailing lists
> because of it) so he finally reluctantly moved from yahoo to gmail
> several months later, and that solved that issue.
> 
> Also, last year when I was shopping around for a mail server, one of
> the shaw.ca mail server software support team suggested to me that I
> should not use their mail server for anything serious, and I should
> try gmail instead (!).  I was a bit surprised by that, but his
> superior backed him up so that is fundamentally why I adopted the
> gmail mail server for receiving my email last year.  And I will likely
> stick with gmail (albeit with a new account that is confirmed to be
> recoverable for multiple computers and browsers).  However, I would
> still be generally interested (in terms of keeping up to date on what
> is going on with this particular google monopoly) if it turns out
> there really is a good alternative to gmail.  For example, the article
> at
> <https://www.techworld.com/picture-gallery/apps-wearables/best-gmail-alternatives-3665005/> 
> 
> is a start in that direction although it did not mention the mailing-list
> software compatibility issue that is of most importance for my needs.
> 
> Alan
> 


Hi Alan,

Maybe your needs are more demanding than mine but I've been using Duck 
Duck Go for several years now and it has almost always done the job for 
me.  Only a couple of times, and then several years back regarding 
technical issues wrt linux, did it not prove adequate.

Again maybe your needs are more than mine but I have my own website 
which I now really only use for email.  Well worth ~$120/year to stay 
out of the clutches of the evil empire.

One Google service I still use is Maps because I'm not aware of a good 
alternative.  Anybody?

I view Google's centralization of the internet through their databases 
as a major threat to human civilization.

Arthur